Digital signage for churches.

Where the screens go

Most churches have three places where a screen does a job no printed notice can. Start with the first and add the others once it works.

The foyer, by the main doors. Everyone passes it twice, on the way in and on the way out. This is the screen for the welcome, the service times, the countdown and what is coming up this week. It is also where a newcomer looks for directions, so give them: where the children’s groups meet, where the coffee is, who to ask.

The hall or the café area. After the service people stand here with a cup in their hand and a few minutes to spare. This is for the notices that need more than a glance — the youth weekend, the volunteer rota, the collection for the food bank — each with a QR code to sign up or give.

The overflow room. When the main room is full, a screen here carries the service through the Live stream app. Give it a playlist of its own, so the stream is all it shows.

Size, height and orientation

Measure from where people actually read the screen, not from the middle of the room. For large text, like a welcome or a countdown, the furthest reader can be about six screen heights away; for a list of events read line by line, about four. In a foyer read from three or four metres that means 43" to 55"; in an entrance hall read from four or five metres, 55" to 65". The hardware guide has the full table.

Hang it higher than you would at home. Before a service the foyer is full, and a screen at eye level is one that nobody behind the first row can see. A QR code is the exception: it has to be scanned, so put it on a screen people can walk up to, and make the code large.

Landscape suits most foyers and every live stream; portrait suits a narrow wall beside a door. Decide before you mount it — the mount and the cable follow from it — then set the orientation for that screen in the dashboard.

What goes on the foyer screen

A short playlist works better than a long one. People see the foyer screen for a minute or two at a time, and in a loop of twenty slides the one that matters may not come round while they are there. Something like this is enough:

1. A welcome with the service times, from the Text app.
2. A Countdown to the start of the next service, with a message for when it reaches zero.
3. This week’s events, from the Google Calendar app in schedule view, showing upcoming events only.
4. Two or three notices, designed in Canva.
5. A QR code for the giving page or the sign-up form.

Events kept somewhere other than Google Calendar? The Web page app can show the events page of your own website instead.

To show several things at once, the Zones app splits one screen into panels: the countdown beside the calendar, say, with the notices in a third.

Keep one more thing ready that you hope never to need. The Emergency Alert app puts a full-screen message on the screens you choose within a second, including screens outside their working hours, for the day the building has to be cleared.

Writing notices for a screen

A notice in the bulletin is read sitting down. A notice on a screen is read in passing, in the few seconds before someone says hello. Write it that way.

• One event per slide. What, when, where, and one thing to do about it.
• Fewer words than the bulletin. If it needs a paragraph, it belongs on your website; put a QR code to that page on the slide.
• Details people can act on. “Saturday, 10:00, in the hall” beats “soon”.
• The same look every week. A Canva template the comms team reuses makes notices quicker to make and quicker to read.
• Time to read it. Each item in a playlist has its own duration. Give a notice long enough to be read twice.
• Not the bulletin as a PDF. The PDF Reader turns pages on its own every five, seven or ten seconds, and a page made for print is too dense to read on a wall. Put the bulletin behind a QR code instead.

Who keeps it right

Screens in a church go stale for the same reason noticeboards do: everyone can add to them and nobody owns them. Give one person the playlist. Give everyone who runs a group a login of their own — as a Member to change content, or as a Viewer to look without changing anything — so that the youth leader updates the youth slide and nobody needs the comms volunteer’s password.

Then make three habits:

• Monday: last week’s notices off, this week’s on.
• After the service: the Countdown moved to the next one. It does not roll over by itself.
• The evening before: a look at the screens list in the dashboard. Every screen reports when it was last seen and what it is playing, so one that went dark during the week shows up there, not in front of the congregation.

Working hours do the rest. Each screen comes on before the service and goes dark after it, on its own clock, even if the internet is down. A church on more than one site can run the same playlist on all of them.

What goes wrong, and how to avoid it

• A screen on all week in an empty building. Set the working hours on the day you install it.
• Last month’s events still on the wall. Show upcoming events only in the calendar, and switch notices off when they end.
• A QR code nobody can reach. Above the heads of the crowd, it is decoration.
• The overflow room on weak Wi-Fi. A live stream needs the connection the whole time; a cable is worth running.
• The stream’s sound in the foyer. If the foyer screen shows the service too, switch its sound off: the foyer is next door to the room the sound comes from.
• Asking the foyer screen to do the main room’s job. SignageStack is not worship presentation software. Lyrics and sermon slides stay with the software and the people at the desk.